


to fallen stars

by Mia_Zeklos



Series: Reylo Week 2020 [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, Codependency, F/M, I mean? Kind of? They're not allowed to look at one another so there's that, Mutual Pining, Rey is the goddess of the dawn and Ben is the god of the night sky, not a particular one I just made one up for the occasion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23899588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_Zeklos/pseuds/Mia_Zeklos
Summary: “Don’t be afraid,” he tells her at the very first dawn – their very first touch – once she’d let the Sun shine its light over all of the creatures crawling to the surface down below. Her presence brings hope and joy and life and, the god of sunsets had assured her, the night would sink its claws into everything good in the universe if she ever lets it. She had never asked to be the guardian of all things good, but then again, he had never asked for the curse of bearing the night on his shoulders either. “I feel it too.”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721188
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15
Collections: REYLO WEEK 2020





	to fallen stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day two of the Reylo Week on tumblr - Mythology / Legends / Fairytales. Title taken from/inspired by [this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv5CAFlrNWE) Angsty and intense and barely comprehensible because it's the only way I can write mythology-related stories, it seems. Not sure why I started this week on the note of Rey being coaxed on the dark side, but apparently, it shall continue at least for today, too.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

She isn’t ever supposed to look back.

Rey hadn’t been born knowing much. The world had still been far too young for that back then, the gods like her only children themselves; they had all found their places in the order of things gradually. There’s no teacher to help the ones who make the world turn, she’d discovered very early on – no knowledge from a higher power when there’s no one above for you to look up to.

She knows this much, though, always has. She’s the goddess of the most ephemeral of beginnings, of the first rays of sun stretching over a starlit sky, and looking back means facing nothing but blackness, she’d been taught. The gods who’d created the night sky had told her all about it – the Sun and the Earth had joined forces and _he_ had come out of it, and once she’d been born from the ether, they’d warned her to stay back. That way lay danger and darkness and an eternal night, and her purpose is to break through it each and every day, not to make her interest known.

That turns out to be quite impossible the moment she thinks her task into reality.

“Don’t be afraid,” he tells her at the very first dawn – their very first touch – once she’d let the Sun shine its light over all of the creatures crawling to the surface down below. Her presence brings hope and joy and life and, the god of sunsets had assured her, the night would sink its claws into everything good in the universe if she ever lets it. She had never asked to be the guardian of all things good, but then again, he had never asked for the curse of bearing the night on his shoulders either. “I feel it too.”

Loneliness, sharp and cold, exactly in the way sunlight is not. She’s surrounded by love and light and balance and she shouldn’t feel it, but.

“You do?” She shouldn’t engage him either, should know better, but she’s so alone. Every other god has someone else to carry the responsibility with them; a sort of support that the universe hadn’t bothered offering her – or him, for that matter. Although, of course, “You shouldn’t. You’ve got the stars to keep you company, at least. Or so I’ve heard.”

The stars are part of what makes looking back quite so tempting – her imagination fails her on that front. Her arrival makes them all disappear, she knows that much, as she makes way for the blinding light of the day that follows in her wake. They’re distant suns with worlds of their own, but they’re more silver than gold when they’re looked at from their world.

Or so she’d heard.

One look couldn’t hurt, she’d argued when the god of sunsets had made his case yet again, after another bout of questioning. _Stars are light, just like the Sun; just like the life that the Earth gives_. He’d been adamant. _You’d be going straight into the dark. Is it worth it, just to get what you want?_

 _Yes_. She hadn’t been rebellious enough to say it then – still isn’t, now – but it had been the first thing to come to mind. If there’s a reason she feels as out of place as she does, Rey thinks she might have found it.

“The stars exist whether I’m here or not,” the night sky answers. His touch is fading more and more by the moment and she grips at him blindly as the world is bathed in the reddish gold of the morning. “It’s only when my father rests that you get to see them in the dark.”

“ _I_ don’t get to see anything.”

He laughs. It’s a strange sound, and the first of its kind that she’d ever heard – a breathy, amused huff right before he starts fading away from her. They’re taking shape, finally, outside of the vague presence of power that had existed until now, and if this is what being feels like, Rey would rather like to share it with him. All of them – every bit of light in the universe – belong to the family that he hails from; the ichor in the veins he doesn’t yet have is of the Sun and the Earth and they’ve all turned their backs on him as soon as they’d seen him for what he is. “It’s better this way,” he says, “they’re keeping you safe,” and before she can muster up her indignation once again, he’s gone.

~.~

Having a body – the semblance of one, even – is strange at first. To a mind used to nothing but awareness, the sensation of physical touch is as foreign as it is pleasant and Rey relishes in it as the night retracts from behind her. As the first winter of this world had drawn near, her cue to help the Sun along had started coming at a later and later hour. Way down below, the humans – still far too inexperienced in their own existence to realise that there’s a pattern to what’s happening to them – huddle for warmth and for a fleeting instant, she wishes they could do the same. It’s always coldest right before dawn, she’d learnt eventually.

“Do you have a name?” She wonders, not for the first time. She hadn’t voiced it before, though, and the derisive scoff that follows isn’t particularly surprising.

“I have many names. All of us do.”

“Not the ones that _they_ give you.” Humans had developed words for just about everything as soon as they’d taught themselves to speak. “Your parents—”

“People’s terrors don’t deserve names.”

It would’ve sounded harsh if she’d been on the receiving end of it, Rey thinks, but doesn’t retract her hand – if anything, the venom had been turned towards himself, as it often tends to be. She strokes what she thinks is her thumb over his palm, calming the storm building somewhere deep inside. His presence chills the world to its bones with the cold, detached light he casts over everything and she’s on _fire_.

She knows what the night means. The worst things that humanity does happen under its veil, away from every other mortal and under nothing but the gods’s watchful eyes. They kill and chase and maim and love, all their secrets and shames burrowed deep under his protection. “Tell me yours anyway.”

He falters for another small eternity before speaking until Rey is sure that he’s left. “I got it sooner than you’d think. My mother met a man when she first manifested in her human form; watched his entire life unfold. I never saw him, but Father did. They must have thought I could learn something from it, but I don’t think I ever did. Imagine that.” He leans back and this time, Rey can _feel_ him in a way she never had before – not quite as all-compassing as it had been until now, but in the way she suspects mankind likely does. There’s hair tickling her neck when the back of his head presses against hers, a strong pulse under her fingers as they venture up to his wrist. She shouldn’t turn back, but he can look at her to his heart’s content – has done so before, multiple times. The only reason they keep reaching out for each other blindly on both sides is because he wants to even out the playing field, but the thought still fills her with bitter jealousy – no one ever tells _him_ to stay away. “A god wearing a man’s name.” His voice draws her back to the surface again, gentler than before. “You’re not missing out, Rey. If anything, you fit here better than I do. My father might light up the sky, but you’re the one who ushers in the dawn. I’d snuff you out if you come any closer. They all say that.”

“I’m tired of hearing what _they_ say.” Not that they’re at all wrong, of course. Even like this, without having looked him in the eye once, she’s given him far too much, handing over the sight of her only purpose in the universe each morning for him to watch; a better gift than anything anyone could offer to a god dwelling in darkness. “What do you think?”

“Of my name?”

“Of telling me what it is.”

It’s only fair, Rey would say if challenged – he’s known hers since the start. She’d been nothing but a ray of sunshine at first, a promise of daylight in the imminent future, and he’d watched her happen. A name shouldn’t be that much of a sacrifice.

“I was never meant to have one.” It hurts to say it, but most things hurt, for him – the night is a splattered ink stain over the unmarred perfection of his sparkling light bloodline, and he tears himself apart after every sunset to justify his place in the sky.

“But you still do.” She can be relentless if she wants, and she’d rarely felt more tempted. “Might as well say it.”

When he lets go of her hand and turns around to whisper it in her ear, the breath ghosting over her skin feels like the chill in the night air down on Earth. It’s the gentlest caress over a body that’s only just thought itself into existence, and Rey finally _understands_. If she were given the chance, she’d have stood awake through the night just like the humans do; would have dared to reveal what little of her soul she’s still hiding from him, safe with the knowledge that no one else would ever know.

~.~

If managing a physical form had felt strange, it’s nothing compared to being among humans. It had taken her quite a while to master the ability, but when Rey had seen herself for the first time, it had been worth it – she looks exactly as she’d have expected to and ever since then, she’d been too taken with the oddities of her new shape to focus on much of anything else. There are _clothes,_ too; a white-pink pile of silk wrapped loosely around her as if she’s wearing the dawn on her skin.

“Distracting, isn’t it?”

There’s a glimpse of movement somewhere on her left and it’s gone as soon as Rey’s eyes dart towards their collective reflection in the still waters of the lake she’s standing near. He’s much better than she is at upholding the promises she had supposedly made, and it’s difficult not to imagine what the rest of his family must have told him to get him to stay away despite her increasingly stubborn attempts at getting him to budge.

“Yes. I can’t believe I can _talk_ to them now.” There’s no one around just yet, but soon enough, life in the village nearby will begin for the day. She’d have a few precious moments, then, to face the beings that populate the planet they’re all taking care of. “Did you?”

“Humans sleep at night.” And it’s not night anymore, or she wouldn’t be allowed to stay. He’s just a step behind as always and Rey mournfully chases the shadows away without a single look. Their union could tear the world apart, she knows; bring eternal night or too much light for the Earth to handle. He’s just as painfully curious as she is, even if he’ll never say it, but Rey still feels as if she’d got the short end of the stick. All she really wants is to _know_. He’s the night and he’s infinite – the people have already started drawing their maps, led by the stars he gifts them with, constant and countless. She, on the other hand, holds a far briefer, if equally powerful, ability, and he doesn’t _understand_. For him, seeing her light is enough, and he doesn’t seem to need anything more than the handful of instances they get with the start of each day. He’d wait for her an eternity if she’d allow it.

She doesn’t want to allow it.

“Not all of them do.” She doesn’t own him, Rey reminds herself, though it sounds emptier by the day. He belongs to the dark and the night and an order of things far bigger than her; he’d said so himself in his crueller moments, when they’d both been desperate for any bit of contact they could steal away. _We should let it all die_ , he’d said and when she’d retracted, appalled, it had taken them days to muster up the courage to do anything but fulfil their purpose in the universe with the least contact possible. This is how it should have been, this is how she should have done it _to begin with_ , but it’s so distant now that it’s nearly unimaginable. She can’t let him build them a new world, but she can make this easier for them both in the one they have. It’s too bright, too oversaturated for him, but he pushes on. They all do. She shouldn’t feel partial to a single god’s struggle, but it’s difficult not to, when they’d been thrust at each other so carelessly ever since the start. “I’ve seen them wander about.”

“You couldn’t have _seen_ them.” He has an actual voice by now, and it’s as deep as she’d thought it would be – as deep as a darkened sky Rey imagines might look. When she touches him, he’s warm and breathing and _alive_ and it’s the most intoxicating thing she’s ever felt, every one of her newly formed nerve endings singing at the proximity that she can never return. It couldn’t possibly be quite as apocalyptic as everyone warns her, surely. She’s the one who pulls the light up from the edge of the world; if she’s as pure as they claim, then how difficult could he truly be to love? “The world would tear itself to bits if you look, remember?”

It’s not the first time Rey had wanted to _let_ it, but it is the first time she admits it to herself.

In the infinite space between her and Ben, his hold on her hand tightens by a fraction.

~.~

The world has gone dark.

Gods have no real way to measure time – as far as Rey is concerned, the universe had just come to be and had already existed for millennia at the same time – so it might as well have always been this way, but she _knows_ ; knows the difference. Knows what had caused it.

“ _Ben_.” She shouldn’t name him aloud where others can hear, but there’s no one here, Rey realises belatedly; they might just be the only one left. Something has gone horribly wrong for her to be awake now. Everything around her is pitch black, as if she’d gone blind, and she knows, now, what the god of sunsets had meant. _He’s nothing but darkness_.

 _No. Not nothing_.

“I’m sorry.” The world is dark and empty and terrifying, but she can finally _see_ – the shape of a man at her feet, a large, bulky weapon clutched in one hand as he curls up even tighter on himself. Gold drips off of it every now and again – _ichor_ – and the Sun has gone out and it’s all too easy to make the connection between the two. “I never wanted— Rey, you have to understand.” It’s frantic and desperate and demanding, as if her absolution is the only thing that matters. It very well might be, knowing him, but she’s only now learning to read his face as well as his voice. His wide eyes are black holes for her to sink into, his dark hair barely distinguishable from the endless night he’d reigned upon them all. “I had to. The call to the light— I couldn’t bear it. This should have made things right, should have—”

 _So he’s done it, in the end_. Having to bear the night amidst so much sunlight had always been painful and his only solution had always been to fight it with every ounce of determination in him; it would have never ended anywhere else. Even now, with his father’s blood staining his weapon – with the conflict destroyed – she can see a thousand different sunrises taking root in his nightfall; stars littering every inch of his skin, hiding in the strands of his hair, forming anew in his eyes. It’s _beautiful_ ; the sort of beauty the night can weave better than any dawn. The sort of beauty that can only thrive in darkness.

Way down below, the world grows cold as Rey grips his outstretched hand and falls right along with him.


End file.
